Day 1: Friday Night in Cuba, NM

We left late on Friday, but managed to knock out about 90 miles. There were thunderstorms on the distant horizon, but we managed to steer clear of them. Northern Sandoval County had Flash Flood warnings, too. We stopped in Cuba, NM because it was getting sort of late (~10:30pm) and there were thunderstorms not too far in the direction we were heading. The next place to stop would have been another 90 miles to Bloomfield. We found a decent motel and called it a night. It was not a bad place, but I parked the bike in the room anyways. You can never be too safe I suppose.

Day 2: Aztec, Mesa Verde, and Adventures in Camping

We drove up the rest of Northwestern New Mexico, saw a sign for Aztec Ruins National Monument, and decided to stop. Ends up they aren’t really Aztec ruins, they are actually from Ancestral Puebloans. A person that found them thought they were Aztec ruins. From there, we headed to Mesa Verde National Park. During the ride up to Aztec, NM and beyond, we saw lots of evidence of rain in the area, flooded arroyos, and flooded roads that we would have gone through if we made it to my first scheduled stop in Colorado for camping. Thank goodness we stopped in Cuba Friday night! After this detour we continued up to Colorado and spent the afternoon at Mesa Grande National Park. Half a day is not enough to see the entire park, but we were able to knock out the stuff on the west side of the park. We took a guided tour down into a canyon to walk through a cliff dwelling. The Ancestral Puebloans that inhabited this area started with life on the mesa top, and then moved down into the cliffs over time. The cliffs provided better shelter. The other neat part about the area was the fire damage. There was a large fire that destroyed a large portion of the west side of the park. One of the park rangers said that it would probably never grow back to how it was, but if it does, it would take hundreds of years. The good part was that the fire was started by lightning. It would have been disheartening to hear that it was due to humans. The road leading through the park was beautiful and looked out over the mesas of Southwest Colorado and into New Mexico. There was a large butte in the far distance that I am pretty sure was Shiprock, New Mexico. That’s a good 40 miles away from where we were! After we finished our day at the park, we ate dinner at a microbrewery in Cortez called J. Fargo’s. It was pretty good beer, but the service was under par. The food was alright. None of it beat Socorro Springs though. After dinner, we headed north towards Telluride in search of camping. I did not find any decent information online regarding primitive, remote camping in this area of the San Juan Mountains, so we sort of just went on an expedition. It was getting dark when we left Cortez and we finally found a forest road off a road off of CO-145. We were about 25 miles south of Rico, CO. It was dark and hard to find a camping spot. When we first entered the forest road, we found a side road that looked promising. It ended up being a nightmare of a hill climb! Large gravel in the road knocked us about and we almost dumped the bike! After we got through that, we thought we were safe in our expedition. Not much further down the road, we found a nice patch of grass that ended up being a full of mud and cow pies! The bike almost got stuck, and I had to tell Tamara to get off to negotiate the mud. There was next to no traction, and the bike’s rear tire became caked in mud. We ended up camping next to a caravan of fifth wheel RV’s that found a nice spot tucked in off the road. There had obviously been rain in the area on Friday, but the weather was not calling for precipitation. The sky was clear and beautiful that night, too. We set up camp and fell asleep.

It started to rain early in the morning on Sunday, and persisted through the morning. We also heard cows that let us know that we were on the wrong side of the cattle guard. They did not bother us though. The rain stopped just long enough for us to pack up camp before it really started to rain hard. The day was a wash… literally! I thought the rain would surely let up as the morning rolled in, but it was relentless. We skipped donning all of our rain gear in hopes it would give up, which resulted in being quite cold and wet. We made it to Rico in hopes for breakfast, but there was nothing there. We pushed on to Telluride and stopped for food and some time to dry a bit.

The rain would slow down, but did not go away. We called Tamara’s cousin in Montrose to be sure that they would still have some time for us. They invited us to stay the night, and we decided that we would skip the Black Canyon of Gunnison and call it a day there. We went over to an outfitter store down the street in search for gaiters for my boots and some better gloves for Tamara. We found the gaiters, and we also found Otter Paws! They are neoprene gloves made for kayakers. These additions to our rain gear provided much better protection from the rain. Luckily, I had brought two pairs of boots (one for riding and one for hiking). This was great because my boots and feet were soaking wet from water running off my pants into the boots. The gaiters protected the tops of the boots. The neoprene gloves were able to wick away water and keep our hands warmer than our regular gloves. Tamara’s gloves in particular were not designed for cold or wet. Shame on me for making her wear them and not providing better gear. After settling into our gear, we left Telluride and headed for Montrose. When we arrived, we were absolutely exhausted from the rainy weather. The road to Telluride and onto Montrose was beautiful, but hard to enjoy in this weather.

John and Ann welcomed us with their garage. We took off all of our gear, removed all of the luggage from the bike, and hung it all out to dry. The VStrom made friends with John’s ’96 Honda ST1100 while Tamara and I treated ourselves to hot showers and dry clothes. We sat around and socialized in the late afternoon. John and Ann already had dinner plans with their son, daughter-in-law, and infant grandson that live in Grand Junction (just north of Montrose). They did not mind adding us to the dinner. We had wonderfully large marinated steaks! We socialized with everyone. Tamara had not seen John’s son (distant cousin) in a long time, so that was neat. Not soon after they left, we called it a night as we were exhausted from the rainy ride.

Day 3: A Beautiful Ride Home

Sunday, we had a simple breakfast and packed up for the ride home. We couldn’t thank John and Ann enough for their hospitality. Without them, we’d probably still be wet! All of our gear dried very well overnight. There was no rain in the morning forecast throughout the area, but clouds still loomed. We decided to skip the rain gear, but promised to stop if it started to rain in the least. We headed out and south on US-550 towards Ouray. The valley working its way down to Ouray reminded me of the valley in the Jemez Mountains near Jemez Springs. US-550 was mainly wide sweepers tucking in and around the valley and following the Uncompahgre River into Ouray.

Once you get through town, the road immediately climbs up onto Red Mountain Pass. Before you get too far from town though, you find a beautiful waterfall that crosses under the road. This is Bear Creek Falls. It was a narrow falls that fell about a hundred feet into a beautiful blue pool before running off and into the Uncompahgre. The road then twisted further and further up the Red Mountain Pass. Then, the pass plateau’s at a beautiful meadow with a nice, small lake on the West side of the road. This is where you learn why it is called Red Mountain Pass. Off to the East lies Red Mountain 1 and Red Mountain 2. These gigantic peaks are full of Iron minerals in the rock and soil that make them up. They are both over 12,000 feet above sea level, too. This meadow was at about 10,400 feet above sea level looking up to the two Red Mountains.

The road took us down into Silverton (about 9,400 feet above sea level). We stopped here for lunch and walked around town. The Durango-Silverton narrow gauge, steam engine train had just arrived from Durango. It left that morning and slowly crept along the mountainside, meandering its way to Silverton on about a 4 hour journey through some of the best views Colorado has to offer! There was even an old World War II half-track parked on the side of the road. It looked functional as it had license plates! We did not sample any beer, but there was a local micro-brewery that was tempting. If we did not have such a long ride to go, I would have been interested in trying it. This town was really neat. After walking around town and seeing all that there was to see, we geared up and headed down the road.

The next stretch of road climbed up the Molas Pass. It was another beautiful pass that reached just over 10,000 feet above sea level. There were beautiful mountains on both sides of us as well as a few small lakes. This was the final pass of the trip and descended into Durango. We did not stop for anymore photos from here on down. This was the first time we’ve seen Purgatory Ski Resort without snow. Durango is also a fun town, but we just passed through and continued home. We stopped for gas in Cuba, New Mexico and I managed to drop my cell phone battery into the engine area of the bike. After a little work on moving bodywork around, I got it out. Tamara took the opportunity to make fun of me. You’ll notice this on the photo gallery linked below.

We got home late that evening, unpacked, showered, and went to bed! It was a bit shorter ride than we could have done if the weather was cooperating. However, we got to spend some time with John and Ann. That was well worth the bad weather. They are fun people and motorcycle enthusiasts. We hope to find a chance to meet up and ride together sometime. We have to go back eventually to visit the Black Canyon of Gunnison. It is supposed to be beautiful. There were too many photos to post, so you can find all of them here: http://www.tonyfugere.com/gallery/v/trips/2008/labor_day_08/

The Route

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My parents came out Thursday night. They had a real tight connection between Atlanta and Albuquerque and barely made it themselves. Their checked luggage did not make it. So, we had to wait for the first Friday flight from Atlanta to bring the bags. This was nice, because we got to take them to Frontier to experience one of Albuquerque’s best restaurants. We also got to have a nice leisurely start to our weekend on Friday morning. We got the bags early Friday afternoon, and headed out at around 4:45pm.

Tamara and I rode the VFR and my parents rode the VStrom. We took off towards the Jemez Mountains. Since we left so late and had to get to Taos that night, we did not stop to take any pictures. Once we got through the Jemez and into Los Alamos, I missed my turn onto NM-502 and we ended up driving through the residential areas of North Los Alamos. My Dad’s GPS smart phone told us to take Rendija Rd to get back on track. A few miles down the road we found that it was unpaved. We pushed on through it though. Then, right when we thought we were almost at the end of the road, we found a locked gate blocking our way. We looked around for a path around the gate, but it was surrounded by barbed wire fence… We trekked our way back out of there (which seemed much faster than the way in), and back into Los Alamos to find NM-502. This took us to NM-30 and into Española. We picked up NM-68 and rode through dusk into Taos.

We got into Taos around 9:15pm or so. The city’s fireworks show greeted us and we stopped on a side road to watch the last 45 minutes of it. After it was all over, we were beginning to suit back up for the short ride to the hotel. Then, a wave of traffic started coming towards us as everyone from the fireworks show was going home! We picked up the pace a bit and squeezed into the traffic before it got too bad. It was like leaving a music concert at a pavilion all the way to the Best Western. The hotel was just outside the Taos Plaza. Luckily, there was one bar open and they had some food for us. The kitchen was closed, but they had chips/salsa and pretzels for us. We ate, drank, and enjoyed a blues/funk band that was in town for the night. Just around 1am, we went back to the hotel and fell asleep before our heads could hit the pillows.

The next morning, we got up and ate breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant. We got on the road around 10am, and headed north towards Questa on NM-522. From there, we began our journey on the Enchanted Circle. It is a beautiful ride that twists and climbs up through Red River, to the top of Bobcat pass (elevation: 9820′), down into the Moreno Valley and into Eagle Nest. We stopped for a nice break in Eagle Nest where we refueled, took photos of Baldy (which is on Philmont’s land), Wheeler Peak, the valley, and Eagle Nest Lake. My Dad reminisced about stopping here as a kid with his family after hiking at Philmont and continuing west for a sailing trip with their beloved Lollipop. It was a gorgeous valley surrounded by 12,000′+ peaks. From here, we headed south on US-64 to Palo Flechado Pass. There were a few convoys of vehicles on this tight-turn section of US-64, and we made a few risky passes to get away from them. We had some fun on the road though.

The Enchanted Circle led us back to Taos. I was just about to head south to the High Road to Taos when my Dad said, “Hey, let’s go to the gorge.” We had left the Rio Grande Gorge out when we departed due to leaving so late in the morning. I was not sure how much time we would have spent on the Enchanted Circle. So, we headed BACK through Taos. This was a mistake, because the Taste of Taos wine festival had the town full of traffic. It was well worth the wait once we arrived at the gorge. It is a deep, narrow box canyon that has been formed by the relentless Rio Grande. Just west of the gorge on US-64 is a rest area at which we stopped. We walked a little ways down the west rim trail, took photos of the bridge, and headed back to the rest area. We re-hydrated, suited up, and headed back into the Taos traffic.

Just south of town, we took NM-518. This is the High Road to Taos in reverse. It winds up over the Sangre de Cristo mountains and into a valley full of orchards and farming. From there, we took NM-75 back to the Rio Grande and NM-68. We stopped for a late lunch at Embudo Station. This little restaurant and inn sit right on the Rio Grande. We dipped our feet in for a refreshment before eating. Leaving from there, we headed back to NM-75 to take NM-76 south to NM-503 and completing the High Road to Taos (in reverse). 503 goes through the Nambé pueblo before hitting US285/US84. We rode the highway into Santa Fe, found our hotel, and enjoyed a wonderful dinner at The Ore House on the Santa Fe Plaza. We went to bed much earlier, but slept in anyways.

Sunday, we got up around 9am or so. We did not like the hotel restaurant’s breakfast options, so we headed into the Plaza again. We found a great diner right next to The Ore House called The Plaza Cafe. Afterwards, we headed over to the Loretto Chapel to see the Miraculous Staircase. It is quite an amazing structure. We snapped a few photos of the St. Francis Cathedral. Then, it was back to the hotel to pack up. We left Santa Fe at 11:45am and decided to take the interstate home instead of the Turquoise Trail just to be safe on time as my parents’ flight was at 4:30pm. The trip ended up being roughly 450 miles or so. It was a nice pace for a two day weekend since we were cut short at the beginning of the trip and had to get home early afternoon on Sunday. The roads and scenery were spectacular! You can see all of the photos here: http://photos.tonyfugere.com/gallery/v/trips/2008/july_4th/

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Tamara’s niece turned two over the weekend. This is the Jones family and they live in Roswell, NM. It is her sister and brother-in-law live there with their 4 children (3 girls and 1 boy). We took the opportunity to drive the VStrom on a longer trip and test out a few new toys.

1. Our new BlueAnt Interphone bluetooth headsets that also have an intercom feature
2. A homemade hardware mounting plate for my garage door opener, MP3 player
3. New headphones for the both of us
4. My old Escort 945i radar detector

We took a straight highway route to get there on Saturday morning. It was colder than expected, humid, foggy (in Vaughn), and a bit rainy. It took just a bit longer than usual because we took an extended gas break in Vaughn to let the weather pass over us a bit. The route we took home was the fun part.

Before we get to that, let’s look at the mounting plate I created. I took a leftover piece of 2″ steel plate from another project and cut it to 8.5″ inches long (an aluminum plate would also work and be much lighter). The VStrom already had a mounting bar that my Dad installed. It is the SW-MOTECH universal handlebar crossbar. I cleaned all of the surfaces with denatured alcohol and placed 3 Superlock Strips from RadioShack on the bar and 3 more on the bottom of the plate. I put industrial strength 2″ x 4″ Velcro strips on the top of the plate to mount electronics. I started out by trying to mount my radar detector on the windshield with the suction cups. That was not working well, so I placed it in the middle where you see my CamelBak tube. It also had a small piece of velcro to keep in on the plate. This was quite convenient, but if abused, one would have to make many more stops… You also see my RCA Lyra RD1201 MP3 player. It has a SD card slot that makes it a great, inexpensive (I got it for free) 2GB MP3 player. I ran both the headphones and radar detector speaker cords under my tankbag to keep them from flying in the wind. After a few minor adjustments of equipment along the ride, I had everything in a good place by Sunday’s ride.

While in Roswell, the kids loved the bike and everyone wanted a ride. I gave Tamara’s sister a ride down the street (she was kinda scared, but enjoyed it). Then, I gave Cavan a ride who was followed by Addison (seen at left). Tristin got a ride Sunday morning and preferred not to have to turn though (scared to lean). She really leaned against the turn, but she is too light to affect my driving greatly. They all enjoyed the rides though.

After lunch, we left around 2:45pm. We worked our way West towards Capitan, NM on a back road (NM-246). It was a beautiful road that started out in ranch lands with fast, wide sweepers that moved its way into the small cedar trees that are typical of the Southern Rockies. The sweepers got a bit tighter in these areas, but nothing below 40mph (turn recommended speed). This ride was pretty straight with the occasional set of sweepers that rode the contour of the land or went around ranch land. After we fueled up in Capitan, we headed west to Carrizozo. I learned that the Valley of Fires was only a short drive from there and decided we should check it out.

The Valley of Fires is maintained by the Bureau of Land Management although it really has the facilities like a national or state park. According to their brochure: “Lava vents extruded lava which flowed on the earth’s surface about 1,500 to 5,000 years ago, making this one of the youngest lava flows in the Continental U.S. (Although Mount St. Helens erupted in the 1990s and is building a lava dome in its crater, it did not cause a flow of lava across the landscape.)”

From there we traveled back to Carrizozo and then north to Mountainair. Along the way, my route had us going up to Willard via Corona. There were a couple of isolated thunderstorms that way, and I came across NM-55. I realized that I could take it up through Claunch instead. Thank goodness, because the rain was heading our way. We saw maybe two or three drops hit the windshield before steering clear of that mess. We ate dinner in Mountainair at a small diner-like restaurant. Then, we headed north towards Manzano and Tijeras. NM-55 north of Mountair is a fun lazy sweeping road that twists up the Manzano mountains through three or four tiny unincorporated townships in Torreon county.

Just around Manzano, we caught a beautiful sunset over the Manzano mountains. Then it was onto Tijeras canyon, which consists of mid-sweepers and tighter sweepers that made the last part of the ride quite enjoyable. We took a side-road all the way into town that turns in Central Ave.

After we crossed the river, we took Atrisco up the bluffs and back to our side of town to get home at around 10pm. That made the ride roughly, 7 hours including a fuel and dinner stop. Outside of the fact that it is a more straight road ride, it was enjoyable. The VFR would not have been near as comfortable.

Check out all of the photos here:

Laurelen’s 2nd Birthday

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840 Miles of Southwest Fun!

It all started out with replacing a REALLY bent inner fork tube for the VFR. Check it out… <sarcasm>Can you see where it is bent? I’m not sure that it is pronounced enough.</sarcasm>

Tamara and I fixed the bike up together and went on a ride to Western NM and Eastern AZ over the Memorial Day weekend holiday. Check out the photos here: Memorial Day Weekend Ride.

Day 1 (Friday): 80 miles to Socorro

We left after work around 6:15pm and headed to Socorro. The wind was a bit high and we were heading into it. The one hour drive to Socorro couldn’t go by fast enough! An annoying start to the ride. We stayed at a Howard Johnson that was strategically placed across the street from Socorro Springs Brewery. They have the best beer and pizza in the Southwest! This would be our only stay in a hotel, too.

Day 2 (Saturday): 280 miles to Bill Evans Lake

The 280 miles to Bill Evans Lake outside of Silver City involved a beautiful drive to the Bosque del Apache just south of Socorro on NM1 and then across Emory Pass on NM152. We traveled north on NM35 and NM15 to the Gila Cliff Dwellings. The day was growing late from taking our time at the Bosque and then stopping at overlooks on the way over the pass. We wanted to try to find some hot springs in the mountains, but did not find any (that were free to the public at least). We ate dinner at a fine dining lodge called the Breathe Inn (ha!). It was in the middle of nowhere, but the food truly was fine. We had brie cheese with a strawberry glaze and chile rubbed shrimp cocktail for appetizers. Then, stuffed chicken and blackened ahi tuna with a fruit salsa! Pretty neat little stop in the middle of nowhere. We made our way to Silver City and decided to press on instead of stopping for the night just north of town at a campground. We found a public man-made lake (Bill Evans Lake) that had free camping and we called it a night there.

Bosque, Emory Pass, Cliff Dwellings, NM15

Unfortunately, we did not bring the proper sleeping gear for the weather. We got a bit cold. This time, dawn couldn’t come fast enough! As a matter of fact, I woke up once at night and thought dawn was coming. I was very anxious for it to show up. Then a few minutes later, Tamara got up to go to the bathroom, and I hear her say, “Awe crap! It’s the moon!” HAHAHA, we got a great laugh out of that the next morning… We got out of camp around 8am and headed West to Arizona. We made Clifton, a mining town, at around 10am and grabbed breakfast at a very busy local hole in the wall. We met up with two BMW riders from Phoenix that were also going north on US191. They had made the trip before and told us some pointers. We kept up with them for the first few miles, but we wanted to stop at overlooks and they didn’t. So we lost them. Then, we met up again at Hannagan Meadow Lodge. The BMW guys shortly after we arrived. They were trying to get all the way back to Phoenix that night! They were high mileage riders. We made it back to New Mexico after a lunch stop in Alpine, AZ. We pressed through Apache Creek (our original stop) and then tried to find food in Pie Town. Unfortunately, everything was closed… They were supposed to have good pie, too. We went back to Quemado (40 miles round trip). Oh, did I mention that there were 40MPH winds, too? Yea, it was really windy. It really beat us up good! Tamara found the “World’s Largest Chicken Fried Steak”, and it really wasn’t that great… We had fully bellies, which helped our attitude as we fought the wind again to get to the Cibola National Forest for camping. We found a great spot tucked off an unpaved Forest Service road (FR-6A) that had a beautiful view of the Sawtooth Mountains (pretty, but not the same as Idaho’s.

Day 4 (Monday): 160 miles to Albuquerque

Again it was cold, and we were cold and dawn couldn’t come fast enough. We slept later after the sun began to warm the tent nicely. We headed to the VLA, and took the walking tour. Got up close with a dish and saw the service repair building. Then, we fought the wind to Socorro before heading north to home trying to avoid the interstate wherever we could. We found NM-47 which goes from Belen to Albuquerque along the river. It was a great road and much nicer than the interstate.

All the photos can be found here: 2008 Memorial Day Weekend Ride

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My Dad, Hollifield and I had another set of successful track days this past March and May. We started at Arroyo Seco on March 8. My Dad and I were down there and taking turns on the GSXR750. The track was running counter-clockwise. I enjoy both directions, but seem to find better lines going counter-clockwise. I guess it is because I have ridden that direction more often.

Sandia was on May 4. The track was running clockwise which meant that the poor little CBR F2 was going to have trouble in the front straight. The carbs need to be re-jetted, but we have not had a chance to try to work on them. I had my GSXR750 out there for the first time since Dave (the previous owner) last raced it out there.

The day went well though. Both of us have not been out there since 2006, so we started in the beginner class. Near the end of the day, after no meatball flags to send us up to intermediate, we were asked to do so. Intermediate was a much better place for us anyways. Our track friends were all there and they were riding expert. Neither of us was comfortable enough to move up to expert. We did not get any photos that day.

The next weekend we took two days at Arroyo Seco. This involved both directions. We went counter-clockwise the first day, and clockwise the second. The drive down there also proved interesting with a stop at a gas station outside of Truth or Consequences…

Both days went very well until my GSXR’s charging system went out for some reason. It was halfway through the day, and I did not want to take the bike apart to have to put it together again! I did get to take the F2 around a few times though, and that was a good time! It’s a fun bike even though it has top-end problems. It was not a race weekend. This meant the track was an open all-day session (come and go as you please). We were good about pacing ourselves though. The only downside to this was that there were only 8 to 10 bikes there. It is nice to have the track to yourself, but having traffic to negotiate or at least some faster riders to learn from can be much more fun.

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